Today, interested readers can listen to my interview about the Chicago Transit Authority’s ill-considered holiday crackdown on homeless ‘L’ riders on WLUW 88.7-FM’s independent weekly news and features show, Outside the Loop RADIO.
Yesterday, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless announced on its blog that the organization will ‘track any efforts to crack down on homeless people riding the CTA.’ The statement highlighted and was in direct response to my recent opinion pieces here and on Huffington Post Chicago decrying recently installed Chicago Transit Authority signage barring ‘continuous riding’ that the agency appears intent on applying only to homeless riders.
No, the Chicago Transit Authority has not yet budged from its thinly veiled discriminatory policy of throwing homeless people out of the ‘L’ system at terminals. Over the weekend in these pages and on my Huffington Post Chicago byline I posted a series of questions about the policy that I had submitted to CTA’s media relations department along with the seriously spin-meistered answers that I received back. Yesterday, those posts unexpectedly made waves locally and nationally.
During the past few weeks of waning daylight, waxing chill, and growing holiday spirit, the Chicago Transit Authority has been busy installing new signage at rail terminals on the CTA ‘L’. The message on the signs is clear, and a bit ominous: they demand an additional fare from any rider who wants to depart the terminal in the opposite direction from which they arrived. Are the signs aimed at the homeless?
Last spring, Ron Huberman’s CTA planning masters came up with a rotten plan to shut off all weekend ‘L’ service on Lake Street and Wabash Avenue to speed up track work. I and others lambasted the plan, and it was revised. Unfortunately, it was only revised to miss the downtown festival season. It’s still designed to make life easier for people who visit downtown, not for the thouands of Chicagoans, like me, who actually live in the neighborhood.
The easiest jollies for eligible Chicagoans can be found on any Lake Shore Drive northbound express bus. If your knees and your bottom can stand it. It’s become a fact of life on every 140-something articulated express bus between Michigan Avenue and points nearer to the Arctic Circle. From Belmont Avenue northward, the crowd on the CTA’s long bendy buses positively bounces–most especially the sveltest riders of the female persuasion. Thanks to Old Man Winter, who is obviously a dirty letch.
It’s a fair question. New York City has its subway. Boston has its T. Washington D.C. has its Metrorail. London has its Underground. Paris has its metro. In all of those cities, the colloquial name for the rapid-transit system is emblazoned on maps and signs, used in official documents, and pushed forward in press releases as a way to help riders–existing and potential–easily conceive of the rail network. So why aren’t the most famous elevated trains on the planet–ours here in Chicago–similarly branded?
‘The cattle car is being reintroduced on CTA trains…’ That’s how the Chicago Tribune’s Jon Hilkevitch described the CTA’s new plan to run seatless ‘L’ cars on some rush hour trains in Thursday’s paper. I wholeheartedly agree.
I love walking, but a 15-minute walk to the nearest ‘L’ station? I don’t think so. So why on earth did I almost agree to be roommates with my ex-boyfriend in suburban Oak Park?
The front-page story in today’s Sun-Times chronicles a northwest side paralegal, Melissa Monroy, who has decided to dump her car to get to work. The way she is quoted in the article, you would think not having a car in Chicago–the city with the second largest train, bus, and commuter rail system in America is a death sentence. I don’t know. I’ve lived in this town for more than five years relying on transit, and I appear to still be here.